The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – On Treason: A Citizen’s Guide to the Law by Carlton F. W. Larson

Episode Date: October 15, 2020

On Treason: A Citizen's Guide to the Law by Carlton F. W. Larson Carltonlarson.com A concise, accessible, and engaging guide to the crime of treason, written by the nation’s foremost expert on the subject Treason—the only crime specifically defined in the United States Constitution—is routinely described by judges as more heinous than murder. Today, the term is regularly tossed around by politicians and pundits on both sides of the aisle. But, as accusations of treason flood the news cycle, it is not always clear what the crime truly is, or when it should be prosecuted. Carlton F. W. Larson, a scholar of constitutional law and legal history, takes us on a journey to understand the many subtleties of the Constitution’s definition of treason. With examples ranging from the medieval English Parliament to the accusations against Edward Snowden and Donald Trump, Larson brings to life not only the most notorious accused traitors, such as Benedict Arnold, Aaron Burr, and World War II’s “Tokyo Rose,” but also lesser-known figures, such as Hipolito Salazar, the only person ever executed by the federal government for treason, and Walter Allen, a labor union leader convicted of treason against the state of West Virginia in the early 1920s. Grounded in over two decades of research, On Treason is an indispensable guide for anyone who wants to understand the role of treason law in our constitutional democracy. With this brisk, clear look at the law’s history and meaning, Larson explains who is actually guilty and when—and readers won’t need a law degree to understand why. CARLTON F.W. LARSON is a Martin Luther King, Jr., Professor of Law at the University of California, Davis, School of Law, where he teaches American constitutional law and English and American legal history. His scholarship has been cited by numerous federal and state courts and has been highlighted in The New York Times and many other publications. He is a frequent commentator for the national media on constitutional law issues and is the author of the books On Treason and The Trials of Allegiance (Oxford University Press, 2019).

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Hey, we're coming here with another great podcast.

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et cetera, et cetera. Also, go to thecvpn.com. See all nine podcasts there. You can refer the show to your friends, neighbors, relatives, dogs, cats. Get everyone to listen to the show. It's been pretty popular lately. I don't know why. It's probably all the brilliant, great authors that we have on there. It has nothing to do with me. It's just really the

brilliant authors we've had on the show lately, and it's been so much fun. You're going to learn so much. Your brain will get bigger. You'll get better looking, and you might lose weight. I'm not sure. I'm not sure I can. Lawyers, let me say that, but you might lose weight. So anyway, check that out as well. Today, we have a most topical, brilliant, this guy has been to more law schools of top names than you can imagine. He is a brilliant guy when it comes to the law. His name is Carlton F. W. Larson, and he is a Martin Luther King professor of law at the University of California, Davis School of Law, where he teaches American constitutional law and English and American legal history. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School. He is one of the nation's leading authorities on the law of treason. Welcome to the show. How are you doing, Carlton? Good. Thanks for having me. Happy to be here.

It's wonderful to have you. It's kind of topical. I mean, what made you want to write a book about treason, I should ask? Well, I got into this subject a long time ago, actually 24 years ago now, back when I was in college, and I was studying history, and I got interested in treason during the American Revolution, so I ended up writing about that, and that kind of sparked my interest in the subject and kind of carried through, and so I ended up writing a book about how treason played out during the Revolution, and as a result of that work and some other stuff I'd written about treason, people started calling me with questions about treason law.

And they started calling in 2016 because of Donald Trump. And that was during the campaign. And then after he was sworn in, I started getting more and more calls. And all of the calls, there was from reporters. These were from big papers, the Washington Post, New York Times, all these people. And the question was, did the President of the United States commit treason? And I never had that question before.

Not during Obama, not during George W. Bush. And here it was as this question, because what the president did seemed so strange. It's really weird that it would start with Trump. I know, it's funny how that happened. Let's get your plugs really quick so we can get people to check you out on the interwebs. Yeah, sure. You can go to my webpage, carltonlarson.com, or follow on Twitter at Carlton F. W. Larson.

There you go. So that's really funny that no one called you during Bush. I mean, even during Obama. I remember the GOP was running around burning effigies of the poor gentleman. I voted for Obama, full disclosure. But that's really funny. You didn't really start getting those things until Trump. So give us an overview of the book.

What's an overlay of it from Skyview, if you will? Yeah, so what the book tries to do is sort of explain the law of treason in a way that's accessible to non-lawyers. And the law is actually surprisingly technical and complicated. And the Supreme Court itself has said this is an area where intuitions are really not to be trusted because there's so many sort of subtleties and snares in how the law actually plays out. So what I'm trying to do is explain it as clearly as I can while also being accurate and precise as a lawyer so that people who don't have, you know, all the time it takes to really dig into this can kind of get a basic

overview of what the law looks like. And then I pair that off with chapters about what I think are some of the most interesting treason cases throughout American history, where we see how the law and action apply to particular cases or trials. How many treason cases have there been across our history? I know there's Benedict Arnold, I suppose. I don't even know if there was a case for that. Yeah, I actually don't know. I mean, it's a very good question, because you could ask, you know, how often has treason been committed? You know, we don't know, right? Because you don't really know, say, during the American Revolution or during the Civil War,

the full number of people who actually did things that technically were treason. And then you can look at cases. Even there, we don't necessarily have an accurate count either, partly because a lot of things are buried in court records. I looked at the Revolution. I still can't tell you exactly how many cases went to trial during the Revolution. There have been fewer than 50 convictions, I think it's safe to say, and only one person actually executed. So it's not a crime that is actually prosecuted all that often. Yeah, and they rewarded Benedict Arnold with naming some eggs after him, so that didn't turn out too well anyway. I feel like a traitor every time I make Benedict Arnold eggs. But those actually are my favorite eggs,

so I guess I'm treasonous in an egg sort of way. That probably makes me an egg Nazi, if you will, to go back to Seinfeld. I guess Arnold was hatching something. It probably wasn't very good. There you go. Wow. Okay. Yeah, he went there. He wrote it.

So who was the one person, just for history's sakes and for our audience, who was executed over? So the one person is actually a really bizarre story, and I just discovered it last year. Every treason scholar previously had said no one had ever been executed. And it's a case out of the Mexican-American War, where American authorities, the military, conquered New Mexico, which had been part of Mexico. And then on the ground, they declared that New Mexico is now part of the United States. Everybody living there was a U.S. citizen. And everybody who resisted was committing treason against the

United States. Well, that was totally wrong. New Mexico didn't become part of the United States until a year later after the treaty that ended the war. And so there were people who were continuing to resist. And so the American authorities then tried them for treason against the United States, and one of them was actually executed. And what's interesting is that this trial was of a Mexican man. It took place on Mexican soil, and the person who was convicted had never set foot in the United States, and he owed no allegiance to the United States.

And that is the one person who has been convicted as a traitor under our Constitution. So it's a very bizarre story. Yeah, yeah, 250 years of history of treason law and stuff and uh you know it the constitution is a really beautiful document because it's very simply written and but it really thinks through a lot of different issues but then of course it's very simplistic in its nature so that i guess there's a lot of different things you can read off of it is that correct yeah i mean one of the problems is you know so treason is defined in the constitution as loving war against the united states or adhering

to their enemies giving them aid and comfort and that's all it tells us and so you know you can imagine lots of arguments about what counts um as loving war against the united states or what counts as adhering to enemies and so that's where where courts have had to spend quite a bit of time struggling over what precisely those words mean. And they're actually taken from an English statute from 1351. And so courts have tended to look at the English understanding of those words as well in figuring out what they mean. And so you wrote, you wrote this book, people are coming to you going, what about Donald Trump and, and stuff like that? What, what, what sort of topics? I mean, I'm,

I know I'm riffing off of some of the obvious, but what sort of topics really motivated that? Were there any certain news items or any certain behaviors that Trump did that, that triggered the treason thing? Yeah. I mean, sure. I mean, the primary thing seemed to be all of these links to Russia. You know, the meeting at the Trump Tower was a big one where it looks like members of the Trump people had met with a Russian agent.

It looked like they were, you know, possibly propagating Russian disinformation. There was the incident in Helsinki, where Trump essentially disavowed our own American intelligence and said he took the word of Vladimir Putin on this, the consistent denial of Russian interference in the election, even though that is, you know, we have thoroughly well documented, you know, even the Senate Republicans supported that. So all of those things made people think, well, is this guy, if not maybe an actual Russian agent, is he a useful idiot for Russia, or is he in some way advancing Russian interests? Do they have something on him?

Do they have financial hold on him? What's up with this guy? Because he seems like he's acting like Putin's puppy and not like an American president. And so that's where the questions seem to almost all derive from. What does it fit into then for you in your opinion, your legal opinion, and experience with treason and everything else? Yeah, well, this is one of those areas where I think sort of common sense intuitions about treason are simply different from what the law has held. And the common sense would be an American president who's essentially acting as a Russian agent.

Well, that must be treason. How could it not? I mean, you're acting for a foreign country. You're putting their interests ahead of ours. Clearly, that must be treason. And clearly, in a colloquial sense, if true, it's a betrayal of the country. But treason is defined very precisely, and the term enemy has always been understood to mean foreign nations or groups with whom we are in a state of open war. And so that means if we're not actually at war with Russia, then they aren't considered an enemy. And so technically, it's not treason. And so the best example is when we think about the Rosenbergs back in the 1950s, who were executed for passing secrets to the Soviet Union, nuclear secrets. Well, those are

some pretty bad people. They clearly betrayed the United States. In a colloquial sense, we could clearly say they're traitors. But because we weren't technically at war with the Soviet Union, they couldn't be prosecuted for treason. And it's the same thing now. And so that means that, I mean, you could imagine the most egregious acts in favor of Russian interests, and it wouldn't be treason. That's also true, you know, pick any other country, England or Canada or Israel or Italy or, you know, China. If we're not technically at war with them, you know, things you do on their behalf are not treason. Now, they can usually be punished as something else, as espionage, as, you know, if you're an unregistered foreign agent or other types of crimes we can use to get at that type of behavior.

But it's not technically treason. Darn it. Darn it. Note to self. No. That's interesting to think about because I didn't understand the war concept. Do you have to be at war with another country um i always thought that i i just assumed because clearly i didn't go to the school for for treason as you did uh or not school for treason but school for law constitutional law

i don't think i'd be very good at committing it i took treason 101 uh so uh but that's interesting you know we had peter stark on for his book compromise and he you know one of the stories he tells is them busting one of the big early busts i think was in the 90s of of these russians that came to america you know in the meantime they're they're communicating with servers and basically servers and phones and and code back to russia and you know telling him things and you know you hear about the servers that were set up in the trunk organization that were this communicating information back and forth, the Lavrov with his campaign manager who, you know, sharing the data. Even now, like I think in the last couple of days, he's announced that they're going to we're going to pull some more troops out and kind of do some more things that are look very much like putin's

handiwork like putin's still whispering going you know we'd really like to have we'd really like to have those troops moved around and reduced so that we can do whatever we want we'd like to pull some more ukraines um and uh but i guess all that stuff wouldn't equate to treason which is quite astounding to me in my mind but uh there it is i mean you you have the definition down of we got to be at war with russia which you know i don't know i i don't think they're dumb enough to start a real war with us maybe it's a wonder cyber war doesn't fit into this as as a as an actual war because that's what we're in now there's there's no to my opinion there's no third world war it's a cyber war yeah i mean a cyber war. Yeah, and it's war in a very different sense.

And I think when you think about cyber warfare, you just kind of think about, well, what's the analog equivalent to that? So suppose they're messing around with our election servers or something like that. Well, does that mean they're at war with us? I mean, I don't think so. Because the analog equivalent is they send some agent in and they go and stuff a ballot box. Yeah.

You know, would that in itself create a state of war with Russia? No, I don't think it would. I mean, sure, we could declare war on them as a result of that. Yeah. But simply the sort of that tit for tat back and forth that intelligence agencies are doing, you know, I don't think in itself creates a state of war um you know i suspect that we're not um a hundred percent uh innocent in terms of what we're doing with respect to russia as well i suspect there are probably some covert

responses that we're not aware of but i don't think any of those things add up to you know an actual state of war um and the other problem that that if it did, people need to know. Because if Russia is an enemy and you're entering into a deal with Russia that might help their military, then you've committed treason. And so one of the advantages of this open war standard, even if it sometimes seems a little weird, is it puts people on notice. Here's who you can't help. And at a certain point,

Russia is off limits, right? Because they're clearly now an enemy. But if it's some vague thing where we don't know, then it's much more problematic. And you would probably know this better than anybody. So I'm asking the question. I mean, there technically is an official standard declaration of war where Congress or the president or in joint thing, they official standard declaration of war where Congress or the president or in joint thing, they make a declaration of war and that would probably trigger. Yeah, clearly that would trigger enemy status, but I don't think it has to be a declaration of war. I think you could have, I mean, I think the Korean War and the Vietnam War, those were real wars. Even without a declaration of war, I think if you were aiding the North Koreans or the North Vietnamese, that that could be treason.

And I think currently, you know, the Taliban are an enemy. They, you know, we had authorization of use of military force, which is pretty close to a declaration of war. I think ISIS is an enemy because we're actively fighting them, um, with our, with our military, or at least we were until recently. Um, and so you don't have to have a declaration of war, but there still has to be sort of actual open hostilities. Let me ask you this. I don't know if anybody asked you this question, but during the Nixon era, or, well, this is during Johnson, Nixon, uh, was running for election reelectelection or no he's running for election I sorry and he went to the um and he was communicating through that one gal uh to try and make sure that

the the they didn't settle with peace with Johnson because he wanted the war to keep going so that he could win election was that treasonous in what he did there? Because I know Johnson was really pissed about it. Yeah, I mean, Johnson said it was treason. And, you know, I think there's an argument that it was. I mean, to the extent that he aided the North Vietnamese and acted with the intent to aid the North Vietnamese, it could have been seen as an act of treason. You know, once he won, I mean, it would have been his own Justice Department would have prosecuted it, and then, you know, would have done it afterwards. I don't know, maybe the Ford pardon would have covered it. But yeah, I think that's one

of the closest cases of an American president. Well, I shouldn't say president, because he wasn't president at the time. He was a candidate at the time he did it. But someone running for president, coming quite close, not crossing the trees in line. That was quite extraordinary. When I listen to that story, I often wonder if Johnson would have publicized that and come out. Because Johnson kind of let it slide. If Johnson would have come out and thrown that and thrown Nixon under the bus, what, you know, what, what, what?

Yeah. I mean, it's huge. I mean, because you think of that was actually a very close election. Yeah. And one, one result of that was Nixon got four Supreme court appointees in his first term. And so you, you, if Johnson comes out with that, maybe that triggers the election over to Humphrey Supreme court then looks totally different. You know mean, all of American history changes, you know, very dramatically. And I don't remember if

we were officially at a declaration of war with Vietnam, or we were running a sort of covert war. I mean, it certainly wasn't covert. I mean, everybody knew we were over there. Cambodia was covert. Yeah, I mean, we knew we were over there. Cambodia was covert.

Yeah, we had the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which authorized the president to take all these military actions over there. And so I think that once you have the Gulf of Tonkin, it's very clear that it's a yeah, that we are at war. I mean, it was essentially a civil war within Vietnam. So we were defending the South Vietnamese against the North Vietnamese. And so technically we didn't declare war against Vietnam because we were there to help. What's the act that General Flynn violated?

And actually Reagan did the same thing with Iran sort of deal. They were trying to extend the Iraq war, make to, you know, extend the Iraq war, make sure the hostages and not the Iraq war, the Iran war. And it wasn't a war actually there, the Iran hostages and they were trying to make sure they didn't release them before he won the presidency. McGlint McGlint's key. McNiskey act is a, Act deals with sanctions against Russia.

The one that has tended to come up is the Logan Act, which is an old act from the late 1700s. Basically, it says you can't be sort of, you know, be freelancing foreign policy for the United States in terms of, you know, interacting with foreign governments. And that's, I mean, that always comes up in situations like this. It's never, I don't think there's ever really been a successful prosecution under it. And there's some questions, you know, to how far you can apply it sort of consistently with the

First Amendment. And then there's the question, well, you know, are you really authorized for the U.S. government or not? I mean, you could think about some of the stuff Jimmy Carter does on his own with other governments. I mean, does that technically violate the Logan Act? You know, probably not. So it's one of those things that often comes up, but it usually peters out and nothing comes of it. Yeah. I've been quietly working on foreign policy with Fiji,

and so hopefully that'll work. No, I'm just kidding. Should Robert E. Lee, this is an interesting question. Should Robert E. Lee and the soldiers he commanded have been charged with treason? This has been kind of topical because we've actually been, you know, discussing for the very first time and trying to clarify that, Hey, that really was like an overthrow of the U S government. And it really was the enemy from within, if you will.

Yeah. I mean, the civil war was the biggest instance of mass treason in our country's history. The Confederate Army was levying war against the United States. I mean, that's just inarguable. I mean, it's a civil war, right? I mean, that's it was a war, as clear as it gets. And the attempt was to overthrow the United States government and create an independent Confederate state. So then the question, once the war was won, is, well, what do you do? I mean, in theory, you could have said every single Confederate soldier

goes on trial for treason and executed. But that would have been absolutely horrific. And very few countries even do that. At the end of a civil war, what you try to do is you patch things up and you welcome the losers back in and you don't just have a parade of execution. So that was never very likely. But it was a trickier problem

what to do with the top leaders of the Confederacy. So you had Robert E. Lee, who's the top general. Well, when he surrendered to Grant, Grant said, you're basically free to go, unmolested by U.S. authority. And so arguably, as part of the terms of surrender was that Lee would not be prosecuted. So I think that allowed, it would have been hard to prosecute Lee under those circumstances. So then the really tough, difficult case was Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America, because he would be the obvious one. If you're going to prosecute one person, it would be him. And you might say, well, that would be sort of a satisfying end to the war. You try that guy for treason, maybe even execute him. But the case ultimately fizzles out.

There were problems getting the case to trial. There were some adverse rulings from actually the Chief Justice of the United States, Solomon Chase, who made this very convoluted argument that the 14th Amendment prohibited the trial of Jefferson Davis. And it was set to go to the full Supreme Court for review, at which point Johnson just threw in the towel and issued a blanket pardon that included Jefferson Davis. And so he ultimately escaped and was never formally convicted of treason. You know, this is one of these things that I love about history, and a lot of the authors like

yourself that we have on, because you look at these arcs of history and you're like, what if this had gone that way instead of this way? And you look at the conversation we're having now with all the, you know, we're arguing over the Confederate flag. We seem to be taking that down and off of flags. And of course, pulling statues down is the new thing, I guess. And if they had been tried for treason, there would have been a more significant – well, there wouldn't have been statues built to them in the South, and we wouldn't be in some of the problems that we're in today because we would have drawn by Mussolini at the end there on the end of a rope. Well, maybe.

I mean, it's one of these problems with counterfactuals is that you can never know how it actually would play out. I mean, I do think we would talk. During the Civil War, they talked about the Confederates as traitors all the time. That was the term. We're going to suppress treason. Now we tend to think of them as we say they're the rebels right which is a little milder than the traitor um so if davis had been hanged uh for treason i think it would it

would make the treason more salient um but it's also not clear that they wouldn't have done statues of him anyway now he would have been a martyr right i mean this was somebody you could say wasn't just killed on a battlefield this was someone who was killed by the federal government you know three or four years after the war was over um and that that might have made things potentially even even worse uh you know i didn't think of that that's brilliant to the union so it's very hard to know and i think that that was one of the concerns that the union had with going forward with that type of thing. That's brilliant. I mean, you can think about it.

For all the people who want Donald Trump to be tried for treason and then, you know, it's a capital crime. If you want Donald Trump executed, how would that affect his image going forward? I mean, I think for large numbers of his supporters and maybe a lot of folks in the middle, that would make him a martyr, you know? Yeah. And so you might not want to give that to people. You know, I never, ever thought of that angle. You like opened my whole head to like, yeah, he would be a martyr, and maybe they still would be building things to him, and maybe we'd have more.

Who knows? This country is so crazy when you start looking at the history. It's an amazing study to take and do. And you lead me to my next question for you. Since Trump's inauguration, there's been a complete list of people that the president, you know, the guy that you're getting calls from, this guy committing treason, he's been accusing everyone else of treason. Peter Strzok, of course, we mentioned earlier.

Lisa Page, Andrew McCabe, Democrats. I think I'm on the list. I think he's tweeted at me. He's probably tweeted at you. We're all just committing treason according to him by now. And I see this all the time on social media. They're like, the Democrats are committing treason. So speak to that if you would.

Yeah, well, it's really one of the most extraordinary things about Trump's presidency. I mean, there's so many things that are just, you know, off the charts weird about him. You know, it's hard to pick one. But certainly this one stuck out to me. As President of the United States accuses another American citizen of treason, that is about the most significant statement a president could possibly make. I guess you're saying this person committed, you person committed the highest crime known to the law. They betrayed the country.

It's a capital crime. They potentially should be indicted, prosecuted, maybe even executed. And for a president of the United States to say that, that historically would have carried an enormous amount of weight, which is why you go back to this. You don't see presidents just sort of tossing off treason charges. And Trump does it. And it's now become so common that we don't even notice it.

You know, it's just a blip in the news amongst all the other, you know, stream of verbal diarrhea coming out of this man that we don't even notice it. And we should, because it's a really horrific thing to say. Because what Trump is saying is not that his political opponents are wrong or that he disagrees with them or that they have bad priorities. He's saying they're criminals. And unfortunately, way too many people take him at his word and are convinced that people on the other side of the political divide

are not just opponents but people who ought to die. And you can't have a functioning democracy when people are going to be that polarized and where every political disagreement becomes a matter of life and death and literally treason potentially on the line. So it's absolutely appalling the way the president has tossed this term around. Which is all the more reason for people to grab your book and really understand the true facts of what are treason. In fact, I'm understanding that much more, especially the declaration of war feature of it. How closely is this to what other fascists, the rise of fascist governments have done?

The Mussolini's, the Nazis, Venezuela, doing a little bit of that. I think Chile, the list probably goes on and on. Cuba and Castro's rising. How closely is this to sort of the fascist thing where you just start accusing the side of treason and threatening executions and maybe in the end you fall through?

Each historical moment is different. So it's hard to draw exact analogies. But certainly we do know that one of the hallmarks of politics leading to fascist type regimes is a dehumanizing of the opposition. And, you know, calling them traitors is sort of a very close step to getting you there. I mean, I think what a Donald Trump referred to Kamala Harris as a monster the other

day. I mean, that's again, sort of, you know, literally dehumanizing. So it is something that one has to keep an eye on. You just, you don't want to see a politics that looks like this. I think this is really important why people should read your book and check it out because I see this all the time on social media. I see people, you know, claiming treason. I see, I see Trumpers saying, you know, he's broken the Constitution. I've even read people saying the rule of law is dead,

and I'm like, it's not really. If the rule of law was dead, we'd be living in a Somali in 1990s sort of pirates of the Caribbean sort of rule. It's still holding together. It might be loosening sometimes at the top for the oligarchy, but it's still there. The courts seem to be the only thing holding us together at this point. But what are some of the most important things or aspects that you think people should really take from the book and get into it,

and maybe they're going to learn from it? Well, the first thing I would hope, and this is sort of what we've talked about a little bit already is just you know don't use this term flippantly you know you don't use it impulsively um uh as you know you immediately disagree with somebody and you think they're the worst american ever you think this is a terrible idea they've done some awful thing and immediately jump from that to traitor just simply is wrong, right? It's wrong legally, but I think it's just also wrong as a matter of just kind of good political morality.

That's not the type of debate we want to have. If people are making wrong decisions, point out why they're wrong. You know, but adding this inflammatory term adds really nothing to the discussion. It doesn't persuade anybody. It doesn't contribute to a sort of rational debate about it. And I'll mostly sort of maybe stir the pot and rile up people who are already inclined to agree with it. But that's not the type of public discussion

we ought to be having. And then I think the other thing I would just hope people would take from the book just is that the history of American treason law is really fascinating. You've got characters that start out with Benedict Arnold. Then you've got Aaron Burr, you know, former vice president of the United States, right, the murderer of Alexander Hamilton, who was tried for treason by Thomas Jefferson, whose vice president he was.

I mean, that's an extraordinary trial. You've got cases arising out of the Fugitive Slave Act. You've got the Jefferson Davis trial. You've got cases like Tokyo Rose and the radio broadcasters from World War II. You've got cases like Jane Fonda in North Vietnam or recent cases like Edward Snowden, where the issue has come up. And so it really is the story of America in many ways. And then if you think about our two biggest national events, the American Revolution, that's an act of treason against Great Britain. And then the Civil War, of course, was an act of treason against the United States. So treason really is central to our story and as to who we are.

And you bring me to Edward Snowden. Edward Snowden, you know, a lot of people have, you know, very strong opinions on either side of him. In fact, recently the court, I believe one of the courts at the Supreme Court did came down. I think it's an appellate court did come down and say that the U.S. government was acting against the U.S. citizens in that case of what he opened up and showed they were doing. So the cases followed him, but I think the U.S. government is still after him. I don't think they're after him for treason, but I think they're after him for some other technicalities of the law. Yeah, so he is charged with mishandling classified documents,

and it seems pretty clear that that's what he did. And so I think he is legally liable for that. But yeah, a lot of people wanted to toss around the word traitor with Edward Snowden, and that was actually bipartisan. I point out in the book, Dianne Feinstein and Ted Cruz both agreed Edward Snowden was a traitor. But again, with a very derogative definition of reason, he's not. He may well be a criminal of some other sort, but he's not a traitor. And I know a lot of people have said that about the Oregon protesters, the Portland protesters, especially during that time where we had the,

it was, you know, that huge run-up of of uh the federal authorities coming in and like arresting people and people are like it's treason they're trying to overthrow the government stuff like this and i still hear this like there's people still having this conversation on social media where somehow there's this perception that our cities are burning like every city every night like half the city's on fire, I guess. And there's me, like, these people are creating treason. You're like, oh, my God. And I think what your book does, it elevates our dialogue to understand this concept a lot better, so we're not throwing the term around.

You use the term rational debate, which tell us more about what that actually means, because I've never heard of that lately. It's a law professor's fantasy that such a thing exists but this is a reasonable debate that you speak of um how is america different in its distinction uh on this is there other countries that take this to a different level or are we are we out there on the edge we're pretty out there i mean as far as i know we're the only country that defines constitution treason quite so narrowly in our constitution in most other countries it's if it's not in the constitution it's it's it would be you know set

by statute and you know the legislature could always change it, where ours is pretty fixed. So that makes us different. In some ways, you might say that doesn't hugely matter because Congress can always create other crimes to catch things that aren't treason. So again, another good example of that is espionage. So the Rosenbergs didn't commit treason, but they were executed for essentially national security violations, nonetheless. And so having these other crimes is a very useful backstop to our narrow treason law. And so you may say, well, then why does it

even matter? It's just a question of names. If we call it treason versus we call it espionage, who cares? But I think, you know, it does seem to matter because people really want things to be treason. I mean, people really, really want Donald Trump to be tried for treason. And I think Trump really wants his opponents to be labeled for treason. There's something in that word that has a sort of a magic spell about it. And so I do think it's ultimately a good thing that it is limited because it tends to rouse passions in a way that espionage or mishandling classified material or being an unregistered foreign agent just doesn't. You bring up a good point. I mean, because it does get thrown around way too much. I mean, it's probably insane. There's probably something I could pull in a study of keywords of what's being talked about. Treason probably is like huge on social media even right now.

And, you know, I probably overused the term. I was at McDonald's the other day, and they undercooked my egg McMuffin, and I was yelling. I was screaming treason out front of the place. And, in fact, come to think of it, I think I wake up every morning and see tweets and start screaming treason out front of the place. And in fact, come to think of it, I think I wake up every morning and see tweets and start screaming treason, treason. So I need to start choosing some better educated words on how things go. You call it treason-y or treason-like or something.

This is treason-y. That's going to be my new hashtag. I think Carlton, you just created a hashtag. It might trend today on Twitter. The treason-y. Trump is treason-y. That's my new meme um what was the thing that surprised you most in doing your research for the book and study on it um well i think what surprised me most and this is probably true of any research project one does

is you think you know a subject pretty well and then you really dig into it uh and you discover there's all this other stuff out there that you didn't know about. So the execution during the Mexican-American War was a good example. I didn't know about that. There were people prosecuted for treason against the state. I knew about two of those. But there was another set of trials in West Virginia in the 1920s that I knew nothing about. And in the course of researching this book, I was able to come across that.

So there's just a lot there. And it was a lot of fun because I think learning new things, particularly about a subject you think you know well, is really invigorating. Hopefully I've caught most of it, but there's probably more out there that I still don't know. Did any of the revolutionaries that started the Boston Tea Party during the signing of the Declaration get accused by treason of England?

Yeah, so this was a big issue during the Revolution. The English legal authority said the Boston Tea Party was treason. They said the Massachusetts Provincial Party was treason. They said the Massachusetts Provincial Convention was treason, and they were preparing, at least raised the possibility of sending the leaders to England for trial. And the reason to do that was to get them away from a local jury so they could be tried in London. And this provoked an enormous outcry in the American colonies that this was totally unacceptable, that this was not what treason was. This is not how you try a case of treason.

And then once the war started, it was very clear that they were living war against the king. And so what Britain ultimately did was they were kind of stuck because the legal responsibility would be, well, if you catch an American who's doing this, you should try them for treason. But if you did that and hang them, well, George Washington told them, if you do that, I will retaliate and do the same thing. I'll hang an English person in our custody. Oh, wow. And so ultimately, the British realized they couldn't actually try anyone for treason or they'd have this problem. And so they suspended the writ of habeas corpus with respect to all of these

American Revolution cases and Americans that they caught, they just basically held them as prisoners of war until the end of the war. So no Americans were tried by Great Britain for treason during the American Revolution. But the states did try a number of people for aiding Britain during the revolution. So those are the only treason trials that happened. And some of them actually took place in independence hall right across the hallway from where the declaration of independence was adopted.

That's amazing. You know, I, I, I see people that, they'll spout on social media. They'll be like, those people in Portland are committing treason and they're, they're acting against the country and we shouldn't do violence. You shouldn't protest the violence. And I'm like, have you ever heard the Boston Tea Party started this country? It was an act of violence. It was a riot.

It was an act of treason, I guess, or maybe it was. I guess therein lies the dichotomy of what we've been talking about. Anything more we need to know about your book and all that good stuff? One thing I would add, I guess I sort of mentioned it before with the West Virginia miners case, is that treason isn't limited to treason against the United States. So states can potentially try treason cases. So if you try to overthrow a state government by force and violence, you could possibly be charged with treason against that particular state.

Oh, wow. So if you look at these Michigan militia members who were recently indicted, their plan to kidnap the governor of Michigan, apparently with the intent of trying to change Michigan's policies, could be an act of treason by levying war against the state of Michigan. Now, they didn't actually carry it out. It was just a conspiracy. And historically, a conspiracy to levy war is not an actual act of treason. You had to actually start carrying it out, and they didn't carry it out. So I don't think it could be given what they did, but had they carried it out,

that would have been a crime that Michigan might have thought about charging. Do states usually have a treason code on their laws? Yeah, so not all states do. Some states define it in their state constitution, but not in their criminal law. And then there are states that actually do have a state criminal statute against treason. And so it will say, you know, treason against, say, Michigan consists of living war against the state or adhering to its enemies, giving them any comfort. So usually tracking the federal language. Wow. Note to self self before overthrowing California, check with state law.

That's right. There you go. Well, this has been a really interesting conversation. I've learned a ton of stuff and I'm sure the book is going to get in and teach people a whole lot more about this and hopefully educate people because one of the biggest things we need is better education. This country,

people aren't throwing around terms and you know, everyone's committed treason. You know, there's probably people that are going to hear this podcast and be, you know, cause treasonous because we're speaking out against whatever, you know. I don't know. And clearly I'm still working on my treason case with McDonald's and the McMuffin. So there's that. But I think my dogs actually accuse me of treason every morning if they don't get their dog treats. I get a lot of that going on.

So there's that. Give us your plugs once again, Carlton, where people can check out the book, order it, and find you online. Sure. My website, www.carltonlarson.com, and on Twitter, at Carlton F.W. Larson. There you go. And our conversation today on treason, a citizen's guide to the law. This gentleman knows his law like nobody's business, so you definitely want to check it out and educate yourself.

This is a really important time. I mean, this is the first year that I actually sat down and read the Constitution, read the Madison Papers. I've been reading all about the importance of law, the rule of law, and I encourage everybody to do that because we need to understand what's going on in this country so we can have better conversations, we can have a better education, we can have a better appreciation for what is this very young republic, very young government. And, you know, like Ben Franklin said, you have a republic as long as you can keep it.

And it's very important we keep it. And I'm really heartened by what I'm seeing by the voters that are showing up. It seems like voting and caring about voting is really huge. In fact, I think I read one of the states has a 96% amount of the people that have registered to vote or something like that. What do you think about the voting we're seeing, people showing up here? Yeah, it's great. I mean, this is how we express ourselves in a democracy. Ideally, we do ballots and not bullets and voting and not treason.

So this is the way to do it. Hopefully it ends well. There you go. So thanks to Carlton for being on the show. We certainly appreciate it, Carlton. Thank you very much. Sure, I enjoyed it. Thank you for having me. There you go. Thanks to Carlton for being on the show. We certainly appreciate it, Carlton. Thank you very much. I enjoyed it. Thank you for having me. There you go. To my audience,

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